


in his image

by fallencrest



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Formalwear, Haircuts, Hannibal Being Hannibal, M/M, Manipulation, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 01:58:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/831401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallencrest/pseuds/fallencrest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal wants to make Will into something more than what he presently is; but, for now, perhaps preparing him for a society gala will have to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in his image

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linndechir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/gifts).



He wants to take Will apart, piece by piece, and put him back together. He wants to build a new Will from the ground up, knows he could convince and cajole and shape him into a new man, something better than a man. 

For now, though, this will have to do.

He takes Will, Will who is all cheap aftershave and dirt-encrusted shoes, ragged clothes and messy hair. He takes him to the tailor on Read St, not his favourite but one who's good enough, expensive enough, to pass. There isn't time to have a suit made to measure, so alterations will have to do. The suit Hannibal selects is a subtle check, blues and greens and browns which speak to Will's colouring. The clearest colour is a blue pinstripe, the approximate shade of Will's eyes when viewed in his lecture room. Even that colour is subtle, barely noticeable except close up. 

There is a tie, too. Hannibal had thought a lot about the tie. If he had been dressing Will for his own private delectation, he might have chosen differently. He'd considered a bow tie, thought perhaps, if not, that he might select something with a print, at least, but he'd realised even as he paused over the selection that he ought to dress Will as a version of Will Graham, not a version of Hannibal Lecter. In the end, he'd selected a tie in that same blue, and whilst his hand had lingered a moment over a pocket square, he had not let it linger long.

As he makes Will Graham anew, he considers telling Will about the career he's made for himself, in making men. He doesn't actually say any of it, doesn't think it would be well-advised to remind Will of his days as a surgeon, not when Will's already looking at him more assessingly than seems advantageous to either of them. Of course, Will knows already, Will is not foolish, not as short-sighted as most people, but it doesn't serve either of them well to make Will think about what he knows, at least not at present. 

Still, it is a tidy metaphor: making men. As a surgeon he had fixed men's bodies, finding problems and eradicating them, leaving only a row of neat soluble stitches to evidence his work. He'd been good at it. No-one had died if he'd wanted to save them and most often he _had_ wanted to save them. Psychiatry is similar. As a psychiatrist, he finds his way under men's skin in a different way, gets inside heads and makes the world inside them different. Will had once spoken of building forts and that is all there is to it, really. As a psychiatrist, he builds forts - it's just that sometimes he walls other things in there with his patients. It's an easy enough thing to do and it's something he thinks of doing to Will. He could put just the right things in there, the right ideas which would gestate, germinate and grow; and they would make Will into something better than he is right now, something greater.

Already, with the hem of the suit trousers pinned and the shoulders taken in, Will is something more refined (finer) than he was. He can't help himself from enjoying the view, surveying what he's made. 

When they'd embarked on this fool's errand, the quest to make Will Graham presentable for society, Hannibal had been surprised Will even cared if he provoked a raised eyebrow over his lack of a fine suit or dinner jacket. He so rarely seemed to care.

"Jack thinks I can't cope, thinks I'm spiralling and helpless and maybe I am - but I don't want him to look at me like that. The stuff with Miriam Lass has got him spooked. He's scared and if I give him a reason to, he'll pull me off the ripper case. I can't let him pull me off that case."

He could reassure Will, remind him how Jack Crawford is willing to stake anything to catch a killer, that his conscience only goes so far (and, if it exceeds its bounds a little with Miriam Lass, that only increases his need to catch the ripper at all costs, because Jack sees it as his one chance at redemption). He doesn't play that card though, puts forward a deadpan "So, all this is for Jack's benefit?" and begins anew a discussion of how Jack Crawford is not a friend or ally to be relied upon, not someone Will ought to trust. He doesn't push it too far, has learnt by now how quick Will is to detect any attempt to guide or goad a particular response. Besides, he'd wanted too badly to play this game with Will to risk alienating him. 

The tailor is only the first stop. Afterwards, they buy shoes - though Will had not thought he would need to. "Will," Hannibal says as he directs Will through the door of the shop, tone almost chiding, "You asked me to make you look presentable. Even your best leather shoes have seen miles of dirt road, without ever being buffed or polished. Trust me to do what you asked of me."

He had expected Will to baulk at the haircut. He doesn't. He shrugs like a sullen teenager, suggesting that he knew it would be necessary. When Hannibal mentions, tentatively, that he has some little experience in the field himself, Will eases up, and when Hannibal asks if he'd rather that than go to a barber's, Will says, "anything to save me from an old man who wants to talk about baseball and the state of the nation."

"It is only a trim, Will," he says, when Will tenses up again, sat on the porch of his house on a still evening with a towel draped over his shoulders, "you will barely even notice the change." 

There is something intimate about it, just as Hannibal had hoped, in the quiet of the evening, barely disturbed by Will's many canine companions. There is something big at work, too, in the small fact of the scissors in Hannibal's hand, Will's complete trust, his absolute lack of fear. Hannibal knows how misplaced Will's trust is, how easily he could undo Will in an instant or how long he could spend taking him apart with just that little pair of barber's scissors, in the vast emptiness of the Virginia countryside with no-one but dogs to bear witness. He loses himself for a while, instead, in the intimacy of it: the fine strands of Will's hair and the way Will doesn't flinch from his touch or question how often Hannibal's fingers search out the skin at the nape of his neck. Once or twice, Hannibal catches Will trembling a little.

On the night of the gala, when Will is to be presented for Jack Crawford's delectation, Hannibal surveys his work. It is not everything that it might be but it is a fair presentation of a rarefied thing. He can confess to himself that he likes Will, likes him more than he should, likes Will's stubbornness and his standoffishness even in the face of this, the way Will says, "so, do I pass?" like it's a challenge, daring dissent. 

"Your tie," Hannibal says, taking time over his words as always, knowing how it riles Will and settles him both at once, "is not tied to its best advantage." 

"And what would be 'its best advantage'?" Will challenges. 

Hannibal had wanted that, hoped for just that kind of challenge. He takes two steps toward Will and unties Will's uneven four-in-hand, says "this," even as he begins to pass the wide blade end of the tie over and around, beginning a new knot. 

They are close, closer than perhaps they need to be, as Hannibal winches the new knot tight, paying attention to Will's breathing and refusal to meet his eye.

When he steps away, he says "there" as though nothing whatsoever has passed between them and then says "shall we go in?" because he cannot afford to leave Will time to think this over, not just now. And much though he dislikes to serve Will up like this, to display and give him over to others, much though he wants Will to be reserved for his own private savouring, he knows that everyone who looks at Will tonight will be seeing Will as he has made him, as he wishes for them to see him, and that will suffice, in this instance at least. Though perhaps not forever.


End file.
